In different territories of the earth, the transition from stone axes to metal axes occurred at different times. But even now there are places in which non-metallic tools are still used. Basically, this can be observed in African and Australian tribes with preserved primitive communal way of life.
Stone ax in the life of ancient people
The first tools of the oldest people were made of stone.
Initially, they were just the simplest devices that only made work easier. People in antiquity sought out strong stones (mainly pebbles and silicon) with the sharpest edges and used them in everyday life. Then they learned to process, chop, crush and even grind (in the Paleolithic).
The first stone axes (rather hand-chopped) of ancient people - a universal tool. With their help, an ancient man performed certain work when a tip was needed, moreover, strong and durable.
For such tools, primitive people found rather massive stones (about 1 kg in weight) 10-20 centimeters long, encircled them with some other, also hard, stone, sharpening them below and rounding them off so that it was convenient to hold them with their hands.
How to use a stone ax? People dug with a chopper, struck during the hunt, cut them everything that succumbed to him.
Due to the fact that people's hands were still imperfect, the shape of the turned tool mainly depended on the size of the stone originally found.
Improving the forms of tools
People in the process of life gradually improved their tools. The stone ax more and more took the form of a tool and became a tool not so universal, but used only for certain purposes.
In the hunt for the extraction of animals, a new tool has already been used - the pointed. And the scraper was used by women when stripping the skins of animals killed by men. It was women who often had to work with this tool. So the first female stone tool appeared.
Battle Stone Axes
Only in the period of the Neolithic (Late Stone Age) with the process of increasing the skill of people in terms of stone processing , fighting types of axes began to arise. The hatchets were small in size, especially for the possibility of conducting a battle with one hand (length - 60-80 cm, weight - 1-3.5 kg).
Such axes made of obsidian blades were also found on the American continent among the indigenous inhabitants of these places (the period of Spanish colonization).
Stone ax: photo, history of development
The oldest tools found in our time were created about 2.5 million years ago. As mentioned above, the first tool of an ancient person (chopped) was an ordinary stone with one sharp edge.
Subsequently, the process of manufacturing an ax or any other stone product happened approximately like this: 1 piece of flint was fixed, and the other was used instead of a hammer, with which excess parts were chipped off the stone, and thus the corresponding form was made to the manufactured tool. Then people learned to polish and grind these products.
However, there was one problem. Stone tools quickly crumbled, and in this connection their frequent replacement was required.
Over time, the next important step came - combining the stick and chopped into a single tool. And so it turned out a stone ax. The advantage of such a tool is that the additional lever greatly increased the force of impact, and working with it has become more convenient.
The methods for attaching the handle and the chopping part were very different: a bandage was used in the split handle, rubber resin was used, or the working part of the tool was simply driven into a strong massive handle.
They made it from flint, obsidian, and other hard rocks.
In the later Stone Age (Neolithic), axes were already made with a hole for the handle (with an eye).
The stone ax began to disappear in the territories of modern Europe when bronze items began to appear (starting from the 2nd 1000th anniversary of BC). Despite this, stone, in connection with cheapness, existed for quite some time in parallel with metal.
Difficulties in making a stone ax
The very first axes, which are similar in form to modern ones, appeared in the Mesolithic period (approximately 6000 years BC).
How to make a stone ax out of stone? It was a difficult engineering task for primitive people - connecting two elements of an ax.
If even the holes in the stone could already be made, then in this case the thickness of the "blade" of the stone ax increased, and it turned into a hammer or cleaver, with which it was only possible to crush the wood fibers, and not to cut them. In this regard, an ax with an ax was simply tied together with the help of veins or skin of various animals.
As soon as people learned to smel metal, they immediately began to make copper axes. But the "blades" themselves continued to be produced in an old fashion (of stone) for a long time, because shale and flint surfaces allowed to sharpen surprisingly sharp products. And the eye was made in the ax itself.
Finally
If you think about it, then many centuries ago this simplest and at the same time amazing thing was not just a tool for primitive people or an instrument, but also a symbol of greatness and power. Stone axes are the most precious objects of that time, made by the hands of ancient people, which laid the foundation for the creation of a modern ax.